


Spare the Rod

by faequeentitania



Series: Spare the Rod [1]
Category: Agents of Cracked, Cracked - Ambiguous Fandom, Cracked.com
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Dom/sub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 09:55:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8139811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faequeentitania/pseuds/faequeentitania
Summary: Being a dom that didn't look like a dom was very, very frustrating. But for the first time in his life, Dan was being hired because of it. His new partner was unpredictable, dangerous, and in desperate need of a firm hand. He could definitely handle this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I just can't stop writing for this goddamn show. A brainstorming session with [newo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/newo) is to blame for this maddness. I have a lot of nerdy meta for this universe that may at some point make its way into fic.

Being a dom who didn’t look like a dom was very, very frustrating.

Dan wasn’t exactly sure what it was about him that made people astonished (or flat-out disbelieving) when he told them his alignment.

He wasn’t very tall in stature, true, but he was stocky, and that should have counted for something. He also made an effort to dress well, almost always wearing a button down shirt, a tie, and a vest, which he thought gave him more of an air of authority.

“You’re just too... nice,” a girl he dated briefly had told him when she dumped him, “It just doesn’t feel like I’m talking to a dom.”

He tried to be more assertive after that, act more like the dom stereotype, but he just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a jerk, it just wasn’t in his DNA. He was good at leading a room, when given the chance; he was often put in charge when it came to school projects or into leadership positions at his various jobs, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know how to give orders. He just wasn’t super good at giving out the “large and in charge” vibe when it came to dating.

He held out hope that _someday_ he’d find someone appreciative of that, but until then it just sucked.

Then the opportunity to work for Cracked came along. It was a dream come true; a fresh start in a new state (a new coast, even!), the chance to really get his writing out there, an opportunity to advance, and the cherry on the fucking cake was that they wanted him for his capabilities as a dom.

“We have an... _issue_ employee,” he was told, his potential new boss’s voice deep and eerie over the phone. This guy was Dom with a very emphasized capital D, “He’s good at his job but he needs a firm hand. He’s unpredictable and mildly dangerous, but you’ll be given insurance to protect you if he takes it too far. It’s not a position you should take lightly, O’Brien, but you come highly recommended. Can I trust you’re up to the challenge?”

“Yes sir,” Dan had agreed without question, chomping at the bit for the opportunity to prove himself, “You can count on me, sir.”

“Good,” The Chief said, “You start Monday. I’ll have your travel arranged. You should hear from us with details by the end of the day.”

The line went dead before Dan had a chance to thank him, and he staunchly pushed away any feelings of doubt. This was going to be good for him. It was a great opportunity. He was going to write, he was going to network, he was going to make it happen. No matter what.

Then he met Michael. All strangely dressed, unnervingly weird, six-foot-three-inches of him.

He was daunted by the prospect, if he was being honest. Upon first impression, he would have sworn up and down that Michael was a dom. He was bossy, he was insistent, he ignored orders as much as possible. While Dan could hold his own fairly well in a room full of other doms, he did have a lot of doubt in his ability to out-dom Michael and get him under some semblance of control.

Then the “fag comment incident” happened, and it became shocking clear to him how fragile Michael’s sense of self was. No dom would ever be traumatized by such a trivial thing; pissed off or annoyed, sure, but not _devastated_. That was sub behavior, and Dan started to question exactly what he knew about Michael.

It was rude to ask someone’s alignment; if you couldn’t tell then you were supposed to wait until they offered the information, but it was driving Dan nuts that Michael hadn’t flat told him one way or another yet.

Especially since the “fag comment incident” had apparently sealed Michael’s trust in him. He spent more and more time in Dan’s cubicle, just talking his nonsense stories or flipping through magazines. Dan wasn’t sure when Michael actually wrote his articles; they just seemed to magically appear each morning in the publishing queue. He decided not to question it.

Apparently it was enough to satisfy the Chief, though. During the performance review that he’d really rather forget, it was made clear that he was somewhat of an anomaly; he seemed to be the only dom Michael had ever been able to work with on a daily basis.

Despite the physical and psychological trauma of his performance review, walking away with that knowledge was certainly a boost to his ego. He had a lifetime of being overlooked by subs and doms alike, constantly needing to push hard to prove himself; yet weird, wild Michael worked with Dan better than anyone else before him. Despite himself, he liked that.

It didn’t make Michael any less confusing, though. He was just a mess of contradictions, really.

One minute he could be sitting in the chair beside Dan’s desk, leaning almost flat on the hard surface to put himself below Dan; all so he could look up at him with that sugar sweet grin and ask for candy. The next minute, Dan’s learning about the woman seemingly trapped in Michael’s backseat.

He knew that there were subs out there who entered slavery contracts; there were even auctions for such subs if you were wealthy enough. Dan knew without a doubt, though, that this was not the case here.

Really, he should have done something. Anonymous tip to the police, at the very least, but he was too terrified of the Chief to risk putting Cracked’s top writer in jail. He just hoped that someday he could convince Michael to let her go instead.

In all fairness, though, he was also distracted by the fallout of Michael outing him as a horse person. It was hard enough for the other doms to take him seriously before; now it was almost impossible. He started day drinking pretty shortly after that.

As bad as that was, and as much as it severely damaged his reputation (especially in Mandy’s eyes; one of the few doms Dan had ever met that he would bend his alignment for in a heartbeat), he was surprised when things eventually evened out.

Not that things were normal, by any stretch of the imagination; he didn’t think that was possible as long as Michael was around, but he got into the swing of things eventually. He learned how to deal with Michael better and better each day, and before he knew it he kind of cared about the guy. It was an intensely unnerving sensation, to say the least, and one that he very vehemently squashed down.

Then the idiot almost died. Dan wasn’t exactly sure of what happened. He knew what his brain remembered (Michael’s head exploding in a bloody gush), but there was no way that was reality. He must have been drugged, or maybe his brain was blocking out reality because the truth was even more horrible than fiction, somehow.

He tried not to dwell on it; a skill he was perfecting in his time at Cracked. Ignorance was bliss, and all that?

Things got weirdly better once Sarge took over. He may have been just as much Dom with a capital D, but he was more hands-on than the Chief; actually emerging from his office regularly to involve himself in the goings-on at Cracked.

Then there was Mandy. Beautiful, cruel Mandy who had miraculously decided that he was worth her time. It was a weird dynamic shift for him and it put him off-kilter, but damn if he wasn’t going to try to make it work.

In retrospect, he wasn’t sure how that could have turned out as anything other than a disaster. Not just because Mandy was clearly not truly interested in him, but because it caused a ripple effect to his relationship with Michael. What had started to become stable was suddenly thrown into uncertainty, and it was most likely the result of Michael seeing him cowed to Mandy. He was supposed to be the dom in charge of Michael, but he didn’t act much like it when Mandy was around.

As much as it stung, and as much as he was pissed at Michael for the spray-paint dinner party incident overall, Mandy dumping him ended up being exactly what was necessary to course-correct his life.

He actually felt like a dom again, instead of a neutered shell of one, and it was never more clearly reflected than in how Michael behaved toward him. Between macing himself in the face as a “gift” to Dan and trying to hook him up with that bartender when he was moping about Mandy, Michael was making it very clear that he liked the Mandy-less version of Dan more.

Then Kelly Wheeler showed up. She was The Sub That Got Away, in Dan’s book, and having her appear in his office out of the blue felt like exactly the gift he had been hoping for from life.

Until she wasn’t interested unless Michael was part of the deal. That hurt, more than he had expected.

Not nearly as much as finding out the truth about what he thought was his time with her in the band room closet, though. That shook him to his foundation, and not just because it was humiliating. That was The Moment, the life experience that made him certain that he was a dom, and to find out it was all a lie...

It made him determined to redeem himself, even if that meant Michael was part of the deal.

Which was surprisingly... not unpleasant? Michael was clumsy and had a weird dick, but it wasn’t intolerable that he was there. It did, however, put Dan in a strange sort of limbo. Even after all this time, he still wasn’t sure of Michael’s alignment. It wasn’t a big problem at work, because he was specifically hired to keep tight reigns on Michael no matter what, but here, the rules felt different. He wasn’t sure where he stood in that regard, so it felt weird to potentially be stepping on another dom’s toes.

Michael, of course, was completely oblivious to his internal crisis, and the whole thing swept by in an awkward blur. In what felt like no time at all, Kelly Wheeler was gone, stolen office supplies and Michael’s ice cream going with her.

Which put him back to square one.

Except it didn’t, in some weird way. Even though Dan had floundered his way through the threesome with Kelly Wheeler, Michael seemed completely happy that they had done it, and was more cooperative with Dan than he ever had been before.

He still was oblivious to the world around him half the time, with Dan constantly having to repeat himself (and even then, orders didn’t always stick), but he never flat-out ignored Dan or went against what Dan told him out of spite. It was refreshing, and made him appreciate Michael in a whole new way.

Which in itself created a whole new set of problems. He didn’t really realize it until Michael was blatantly infatuated with Perry, and Dan suddenly found himself full to the brim with possessive rage.

It was startling, to say the least, to feel this strong of an anger toward another dom. Dan was not inherently competitive or combative, but Michael spending a little too much time in Perry’s office (along with that stupid, _infuriating_ photoshop Michael did) made Dan see red.

It was good fortune that he did, in the end, exposing Perry for the fraud that he was. He was ashamed to say, however, that his motivation had little to do with benefitting Cracked and a whole lot to do with discrediting Perry in Michael’s eyes.

“Sometimes I feel like you just don't hear me,” Michael said, after Perry was gone and they were back at Dan’s desk, still trying to figure out a way to bring in more revenue for Cracked, “Like you’re just not listening.”

That made him feel unexpectedly guilty. It was at least partially true, admittedly; sometimes Dan just couldn't devote the brainpower to following Michael’s ceaseless talking. It didn't excuse the fact that it upset Michael when Dan tuned him out, and he spent a good half hour reassuring his partner that he never did anything to hurt him on purpose.

In the end, Michael nodded, appeased. Then Michael shocked him, which he had thought at this point in his time at Cracked was impossible; he sat down on the floor by Dan’s chair, and leaned his head against Dan’s knee before launching into another stream-of-consciousness brainstorm on how to get ads.

Dan sat frozen for several minutes, almost afraid to do or say anything. This was the most submissive thing he had ever seen Michael do, and the fact that he was doing it seemingly without any sort of agenda pinged something in Dan’s brain that he really didn't want to analyze too closely.

He made himself focus on what Michael was saying, interjecting every now and then with his own comments or (more frequently) corrections of Michael’s weirdly skewed facts.

At one point Michael took his cap off and threw it up onto Dan’s desk, and Dan took it for the invitation it was; reaching his hand down to stroke Michael’s hair as they bandied ideas back and forth.

In the end they didn't really come up with anything terribly good for luring in ads, but Dan couldn't really motivate himself to care when Michael fell asleep, snoring lightly with the side of his face mashed against Dan’s leg.

 _I'm so fucked,_ he thought, continuing to stroke Michael’s hair gently as he attempted to focus on the research he had pulled up for his next article, _So, so fucked._

He wouldn't realize how right he was until he was staring down the barrel of a gun (again! How did this keep happening to him?), and trying to talk B-Tone out of killing them. He inched to the side, trying to put himself between B-Tone and Michael as unobtrusively as he could while his hand fumbled for his coffee mug on the desk behind him.

He threw a mug of pens instead, which worked surprisingly well too, and they made a break for it.

It all became surprisingly clearer but no less crazy when Sarge grabbed them and pulled them into a conference room; all the weird, unbelievable things about Michael starting to add up.

He would have preferred everything to have all worked out without the use of explosives and Sarge plucking out eyes, but when it was all said and done there wasn't really anything left for him to do but to go home.

Cracked wouldn't be there to contain Michael anymore; they were dead as far as everyone was concerned. Dan didn't know exactly what the Chief had in mind to hide Michael from the Chief’s Order now, but it seemed pretty clear to him that his job at Cracked was no more.

Maybe it was for the better. He didn't really know what to do; being in love with a demi-god wasn't something that showed up in rom-coms very much. He knew mythology, though, and very rarely did supernatural relationships with mortals end very well. There was no way for this to end that didn't result in heartbreak of some kind. Heartbreak was something he’d already experienced in spades, and he really wasn't keen on any more.

Michael’s face when he told him he was leaving almost broke Dan’s resolve. Michael never bothered to mask his emotions, Dan knew this, but the specific brand of hurt on Michael’s features caused a whole new level of guilt.

“I won't last a week!” Michael called after him, angry and upset and Dan hated it with every fiber of his being.

He knew when Michael showed up on the day he was supposed to leave that there was no way things were going to go as he planned. The invitation for Michael to come with him to the east coast was out of his mouth before he could think twice, and Michael shocked him by agreeing without hesitation. 

“I knew it was bad for me, but I just couldn't help myself.”

Dan’s heart was pounding. He wasn't good at this, at actually _saying_ the things he felt. And this was _Michael_ , who had the emotional perception of a rock (on a good day). But he couldn't stop talking.

“I feel like the first act of a Lifetime movie,” he attempted to make light of it, glancing sideways at Michael with a forced smile.

The kiss caught him off guard. It shouldn't have, in retrospect, this was Michael they were talking about. Michael was, at his core, spontaneous and unashamed of going after the things he wanted. Dan just never expected to be something Michael wanted. He pushed Michael away and startled even himself with the slap he landed on Michael’s cheek.

“What...!” he started, startled and unsure. There was an unconfident, self-deprecating part of him that was convinced that this was some kind of joke Michael was pulling on him.

Then Michael looked at him, holding his stinging cheek and looking so goddamn heartbroken.

“...took you so long?” he finished breathlessly, and Michael immediately grabbed him again, kissing him hard and sharp. He tasted copper; he couldn't tell if it was him or Michael that was bleeding but he didn't much care.

He grabbed fistfuls of Michael’s jacket, pushing him down, and Michael sank to his knees without hesitation. It was a power rush like he had never experienced before; tall, wild, strange Michael, going to his knees for Dan without question.

“This is what you want?” Dan asked, tugging Michael’s goggles off his head and letting them fall to the floor of the basket. He slid his fingers through Michael’s mussed hair, pulling back enough to look him in the eyes.

Michael’s brows furrowed, “What?”

“I need to know you’re definitely okay with me doming you,” Dan elaborated, “because I don't think I'd be very good at the other way ‘round.”

It had eventually become obvious to him that Michael was a switch, but after his experience with Mandy, Dan knew he could never fill the role of a sub. He was terrified that that wouldn't be enough for Michael.

“You goober,” Michael smiled, “Of course I'm okay with that. Wouldn't want it any other way.”

“God I love you,” the words slipped out before he could stop them, and Michael’s whole face lit up. He didn't answer, but he didn't have to. The way he kissed Dan, like it was the best thing in the entire universe he could be doing right now, made it clear enough.

Being a dom that didn't look like a dom was frustrating. Dan had a feeling he wouldn’t have to worry about that too much anymore, though. Not with the way Michael settled down on the floor of the hot air balloon’s basket with him, his head in Dan’s lap.

Running his fingers through Michael’s hair and breathing deep of the cool, fresh air, Dan couldn’t feel anything but completely happy as the wind carried them east.


End file.
